Re: looking ahead to 3.6

[Przemek Klosowski]

On 02/14/2011 09:17 AM, John Swensen wrote:

> So what is the consensus?  Should I give up on GTK+ for OctaveDE and
> switch to QT?  With the QTermWidget, I will cover at least as many
> platforms as OctaveDE currently supports (I guess Windows worked with
> a lot of arm twisting).  At some point, someone (Michael if he finds
> time) will need to address the terminal emulator widget on Windows,
> but in the meantime the rest of the functionality can be developed on
> other platforms.  The OpenGL issue will definitely be easier,
> cross-platform consistency will be better, I'm not sure about the
> ease of making an editor, but I'm assuming that is a wash.  There can
> probably also be a lot of cross-pollination with QtOctave also.
>
> I see few downsides and many upsides.  What do others think
> (particularly those who make visionary decisions about the future of
> Octave)?

I certainly don't have creds to suggest the GUI development direction, 
but I'd ask anyway: have people considered using Eclipse? I know quite a 
few projects, free and commercial, that decided to hitch with Eclipse 
for GUI. Some of them (*) seem to be similar to Octave in being 
originally commandline-based, but benefiting from GUI features such as 
code editing/refactoring/debugging, hooks to version control and issue 
tracking systems, etc. Many such modules are already provided in a 
platform-independent way by Eclipse.

I know that Eclipse has a defined extension plugin architecture, 
providing API for new languages and modules. I haven't used it though.
Did someone smarter than myself look at it yet? Would it be feasible to 
interface Octave to it?

greetings

przemek klosowski

(*) I am thinking of several microcontroller cross-compilers and 
development toolchains that used to have a proprietary environment but 
switched to Eclipse. Of course Eclipse itself is Java based so I suppose 
it is subject to the caveats others mentioned re. Oracle/Sun,
but I can't imagine that Eclipse would lose its cross-platform support 
in any foreseeable future because too many things depend on it.